Kahn led a generation of architects away from the standard-issue modernism of glass and steel boxes, but his route was gentle, thoughtful, philosophical, and sometimes vaguely mystical, which is part of the reason that he never really became famous. Kahn’s semi-obscurity didn’t just extend to the cops at Penn Station: The Times obituary had to be written on deadline the night his death became known, because the obit editors hadn’t considered him important enough to merit one in advance.
— The Nation

In his essay on Kahn, Goldberger examines methodologies of biographical writing, and explores the enigmatic aspects of the architect's identity and work. "You get his essence almost as much through his words as his buildings. Both are somewhat spare and cryptic, and both are rich in meaning. Who... View full entry

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the recipients of its 2017 architecture awards. Intended to honor architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction, this year's winners were chosen from a group of 27 individuals and practices nominated by members of the... View full entry

[...] part architect, part furniture designer, part product designer, part researcher, part landscape architect, and part Pied Piper of design, and the things he comes up with manage somehow to be at once charming and brash.

[...] shares not only the Eameses’ determination to be wide-ranging but also their fascination with technology, their interest in communication, and, most important of all, their passionate belief in the meaning of actually making things and in using materials in new ways.
— vanityfair.com

Other recent Thomas Heatherwick sightings in the Archinect news:Renderings of Thomas Heatherwick's "Vessel" for New York's Hudson Yard revealedWhy are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?Construction of Heatherwick + Signe Nielsen-designed Pier 55 to begin this... View full entry

Over the years, Trump has courted me, comforted me, criticized me and sent me a handful of sometimes-fawning letters and notes. I saved the correspondence. Wouldn't you? [...]

And the missives are telling. Combined with other things he's said and written, they show that Candidate Trump isn't all that different from Developer Trump. He remains a master media manipulator who can be charming, mercurial and vengeful. Only now he wants to be the most powerful man on earth.
— Blair Kamin – Chicago Tribune

In this relatively personal piece for the Tribune, architecture critic Blair Kamin recounts his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with Trump over 10+ years, talking (as developers and architecture critics do) about buildings.Kamin explains that there were times when Trump was... View full entry

MCP: How would you characterize the President and First Lady’s architectural taste, as best as you can tell up to this point?

PG: Modern and refined. They like modern things quite genuinely. They do not want a traditional building... there’s a certain kind of, let’s say tailored modernism, that they respond best to. But they’re interested in a range of things, and they’re also very interested, as they should be, in somebody who they will feel comfortable talking to.
— commonedge.org

Paul Goldberger was first offered to advise the Obama Foundation in the selection of the Presidential Center's architect by Penny Pritzker, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who also happens to be the niece of Jay Pritzker – founder of the Pritzker Prize in 1979.Get caught up on the selection... View full entry

In a lecture hall that sat a third empty due to the eclipsed "super blood moon" transpiring outside, Paul Goldberger discussed his new biography of Frank Gehry, "Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry" with J. Paul Getty Trust C.E.O. James Cuno at The Getty Center. Goldberger spent the... View full entry

From a super-sized cheese grater, to a contraceptive sponge, to an inadvertent fun house ride, the critics have thoroughly analogized the new Broad museum in mostly positive (if occasionally biting) reviews. To follow up with Amelia's review, published earlier today, we offer some other critical... View full entry

What is the role of creative exploration in architecture? From the L.A. Times to The New Republic, this question is very much on critical minds. In a piece entitled "How to Make Architecture Human," Anna Wiener reviews Witold Rybczynski's latest collection of essays, Mysteries of the Mall, which... View full entry

Taken out of its high-profile context, the BIG design for Two World Trade Center initially appears to be a graduate school placeholder: here are the initial seven blocks of program, with a light dusting of foliage on the exposed step-backs. The internet's critical reaction to the renderings... View full entry

These days, it is not just a woman who can never be too rich or too thin. You can say almost exactly the same thing about skyscrapers, or at least about the latest residential ones now going up in New York City, which are much taller, much thinner, and much, much more expensive than their predecessors. And almost every one of them seems built to be taller, thinner, and pricier than the one that came before.
— vanityfair.com

Did Paul Goldberger just say that women can never be too thin? View full entry

Ever taller, ever thinner, the new condo towers racing skyward in Midtown Manhattan are breaking records for everything, including price. Sold for $95 million, the 96th floor of 432 Park Avenue will be the highest residence in the Western world. As shadows creep across Central Park, Paul Goldberger looks at the construction, architecture, and marketing of these super-luxury aeries, gauging their effect on the city’s future.
— vanityfair.com

Goldberger addressed the disappearance of journalistic hegemony and the advent of electronic media. While mainstream publications with an ongoing commitment to architecture criticism continue to possess a degree of authority, they are struggling to make themselves heard in this noise. It is clear to Goldberger that “the playing field may be level, but the players are not equal.”
— dirt.asla.org

The National Building Museum presents its fourteenth Vincent Scully Prize to Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, for his lifetime work of encouraging thoughtful discourse and debate about the importance of design.
— nbm.org

Why bother, then? It’s a key building in the history of structural engineering, and its unusual form, a poured-concrete cantilevered shell, has few if any equals in modern engineering. Almost nothing else looks like this building, and in a world of carbon-copy architecture, its loopy, futuristic curves are unique: a concrete rocket ship amid Chicago’s glass boxes. A little weird, yes, but the more you look at it, the more you like it.
— vanityfair.com

Beginning on May 19th, people will see the Barnes collection not where Barnes intended it to be seen, but in a new building designed by the New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

This building won’t please the absolutists, the people we should probably call Barnes fundamentalists, because nothing would please them short of a return to the way things were. But it really ought to please everybody else, because—to cut to the chase—the new Barnes is absolutely wonderful.
— vanityfair.com